At 06:30 PM 10/29/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote:
On a practical level, as I understand it, heat is likely to be the useful product, in any case,
In my case, science is the useful product!
That is true. But as Ed Storms and many others have pointed out -- correctly, I am sure -- particles may well hold the key to understanding the reaction. The thing is, what do you do when there are no particles? How do you reset and start the search over again? You look for heat!
I would not be looking for neutrons if I wasn't following a protocol designed by people who report reliable heat with it. But because the protocol is scaled down, I might not see heat. Anyone doing this should be aware that no radiation may mean no reaction at all. But, more likely, alpha radiation is correlated with heat. You know, it always was a problem to try to figure out how the energy of that alpha was dumped to the lattice. Well, it wasn't. It was in alphas, quite likely, hot alphas. Pairs of them, half goes into the lattice ending up as heat, the other half goes in the outward direction, transferring heat to the surface layer plus the electrolyte, also heat, ending up close to the cathode.
Because of the use of an integrating SSNTD, radiation could be detectable at lower levels than heat, and because radiation shouldn't be there, period, beyond small amounts due to natural radon and the like, radiation is probably more diagnostic; radiation was abandoned for years as a signature because awareness of the alpha radiation was low (though it was reported by the Chinese in 1990, using CR-39). It didn't help that everyone expected neutrons or, at least, if somehow the branching ratio went screwy, gammas.
That helium is correlated with excess heat means to me that it is extremely likely that alpha radiation is as well.
